


Reset

by elzierav



Category: RWBY
Genre: As a bonus Clover gets to live, First Kiss, Fix It, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Swearing, Time Loop, Time Reset, Time Travel Fix-It, Trauma, Violence, Volume 7 Episode 12 Spoilers, Why are you reading this?, injuries, writing this to feel less shitty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:39:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22470421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elzierav/pseuds/elzierav
Summary: “Good luck...” The words resonate in Qrow’s memory, echoing, always, always. He turns to the city in the sky, determination-filled eyes still brimming with icy tears.And just his luck, the sky city falls.Except the city isn’t falling any more, it’s rising now, and nothing is sure any more.In which Oscar uses the relics and Ozpin’s cane to reset time and prevent Atlas from falling, and Qrow’s determined to seize his second chance.
Relationships: Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi
Comments: 32
Kudos: 153





	1. The timeline has changed

“Good luck...”

The words resonate in Qrow’s memory, echoing, always, always. He’s screaming on top of his lungs, yet it’s silent in his soul, too silent, too numb, too frozen. The tears welling down his cheeks are frozen too, solidified in the chill air before they can tumble onto crestfallen snow, like time slowed to a stop. The sun has risen, a new day has already started, perhaps, he can’t tell, the sun’s too far and everything’s too cold. He can’t even tell if the unforgiving Atlesian storms are still biting at his skin, whipping at his hair, because his core is so empty he wouldn’t be surprised if the winds would simply whistle through him as if through a hollow crack in the rocks. He doesn’t know how long he stayed there, he doesn’t know how long he’s staying, prostrated, Clover’s last words replaying in his mind like a splintered record, like a clock ticking, like a heartbeat. 

_ Someone has to take the fall… _

At some point other sentences come back to mind, he doesn’t know when, he doesn’t know how. This shouldn’t have happened, this was such a string of mistakes, from everyone, from himself. He was a liability, even without his Semblance at play, because of his past, his inability to trust others, to open up to others… He would happily have taken the fall, if he could fall even lower than his current state. He cannot look down, cannot look at Clover, at this man he failed to protect, to trust, to love after all the soldier had given him, without ever asking anything back. Disgusting dried blood had crusted upon Harbinger on the snow by his side, the blade reflecting the clear sky and Atlas overhead. He turns to the city in the sky, determination-filled eyes still brimming with icy tears. 

And just his luck, the sky city falls. 

The sun rises, and the city falls. Inexorably under the weight of gravity, sure as the passage of time.

Except the city isn’t falling any more, it’s rising now, and nothing is sure any more. The sun retracts behind the blanket of clouds covering the horizon line. The blood coagulated on Harbinger runs fluidly again, before vanishing altogether. The stars are rising in reverse, as if someone was winding back all the clocks in Remnant at an accelerated pace, each star scarring the night sky with a circular streak of white under the cracked moon. Everything is moving, everyone is moving like silent puppets, too fast, too incoherently, the sky city is soaring again, and it seems like luck is giving them a second chance…

* * *

When it happens, Raven is in mid-flight. 

She can feel it deep in her hollow bird bones, running through her veins, through her soul. It’s the product of magic more ancient than her Semblance, more ancient than her Maiden powers, archaic as the age of the shattered moon. She can feel it all, and the realisation sends her falling.

Her wings beating frantically to break her freefall, she plummets haphazardly through the tree line, in a mess of leaves and jet black feathers. She precipitantly switches back to her human form, drawing her sword to sever the branches in her way before they can claw at her limbs, tangle into her hair. Everything is changing too fast - the day bleeds into night, the autumn leaves aren’t falling but rising, the Western winds now blow from the East. She can feel it all, and she knows exactly what it means. 

She can feel the magic that has been used, the magic of the relics, that same magic that granted Raven and Qrow their shapeshifting abilities. She can feel the relics have been used to reset time - something only two relics can do in conjunction, one of them being the relic of Knowledge. 

She knows with whom the lamp was when she last left it, and she knows exactly what to do.

* * *

“The timeline! Save the ti-”

The General’s words are lost through space as the darkness engulfs him. He falls, tumbles further down through the obscurity of the vault. Everything is falling, everything is crumbling apart, the ground is trembling and fracturing as Atlas is dropping out of the sky…

“James!” Oscar cries out, uselessly reaching out his hand as the Atlesian leader has already fallen out of sight. 

“Are you all that’s left of Oz the great and powerful? Pathetic,” Cinder muses, playfulling twirling the Staff of Creation between her hands. 

The farm boy can’t look at it, can’t look at Ironwood’s blood still darkly staining the bright blue tip of the relic. Can’t look at the bodies of his comrades littering the floor, already covered by rubble as the vault collapses around them in the aftermath of the Staff’s removal. Can’t look at all that’s been lost already, can only look at what he hasn’t lost yet. Can only keep moving forward, even if that means having to lose even more. 

“Don’t move, or I’ll drop it,” he threatens, drawing the lamp from his belt and holding it over the void into which James had just fallen. 

“What tells you I can’t fly down and catch it?” she asks rhetorically, eyes flaming as she levitates to demonstrate. 

Oscar hasn’t thought of that. He takes a deep breath and stumbles toward Ren’s fallen form, drawing the knife the young Huntsman wore at his sleeve. The farmer steps closer to the ledge, clutching the Relic of Knowledge against his chest with one hand while the other holds the blade at his own throat. 

“If I die, you’ll have lost Ozpin again, he’ll reincarnate somewhere else and your master won’t be pleased. After all that hard work to find him, it’d be a shame if you lost him again. You’ve defeated him once, but your mistake was to kill him instead of bringing him alive to Salem. I wonder if you can defeat him again.”

He speaks shakily, a clammy gloved hand pressed hard against the radiating surface of the lamp. 

“At least Ozpin was good at lying,” she snorts over the sound of the ceiling fracturing overhead, “you won’t make me believe I can’t beat a teenage farm hand after taking out all of his Huntsman friends.”

She lands elastically before him, spinning the Staff to knock the dagger out of his hand. And aims the relic straight at his eye. 

“Jinn!”

The Atlas relic freezes in place, so has the Maiden. The debris levitate in mid-air, everything stands in eerie stillness as the familiar blue figure emerges from the lamp. 

“How do I make Atlas stop falling?” Oscar pleads, ignoring the glimmering blue tears angrily spilling onto his cheeks. 

“Are you sure this is how you want to use the last question?” the spirit questions benevolently. 

Oscar falls to his knees against the unstable floor. He can feel the ground shaking underneath him, the whole city crumbling apart. He doesn’t have much time - and although time has stopped, it might already be too late. He can only nod, for at this point preventing Atlas from collapsing over Mantle essentially amounted to saving a fourth of Remnant’s population. Grabbing onto the Staff he tricked Cinder to bring back into his reach before he stopped time, he props himself back onto unsteady feet. 

“I have the Staff of Creation, there must be something I can do to levitate the city...”

“There isn’t. The Vault is destroyed, Atlas is doomed to fall in this timeline.”

No. This isn’t possible. There must be something he can do. For Mantle, for Atlas. For his fallen friends, for his fallen mentors, for those who were still standing, only Gods know where, for Ruby… His heart skips a beat, catching in his throat. 

“... in this timeline...” he breathes unevenly. 

“As soon as your restart time, Atlas will fall. But time has stopped at present, due to the Relic of Knowledge. The Lamp can only stop time, but the Relic of Creation can create another timeline, branching out from this one, starting from a point where the Staff hasn’t been removed yet and Atlas hasn’t started falling.”

“Like... resetting time?” he murmurs incredulously.

“You are allowed no more questions this century. If the Relics are put in contact, time will become unstable and timelines will meld into one another. But the clock in Ozma’s cane has been designed to control how much to rewind or fast forward. The default has been set to one full anticlockwise rotation to rewind one hour.”

“Thanks, Jinn,” he replies, swearing the genie just winked him good luck before vanishing back into the Haven relic.

Raising the lamp hanging off the tip of his cane, he brings the cobalt orb in contact with the similarly shaded Staff tip. Just before the two artifacts collide with a blinding flash of light, an immediately recognisable voice comments almost fondly at the back of his mind. 

“Fascinating.”

* * *

“A free ride  _ and  _ a show?” Tyrian wonders excitedly, a dangerous smirk on his lips. 

Qrow jerks up suddenly in his airship seat, a sickening sense of déjà-vu lurching in his stomach. This isn’t possible, this has already happened, and no one else seems to realise… could it be…

Before the shapeshifter can collect his spirits, Clover’s Scroll is beeping again. Clover’s Scroll.  _ Clover is here. He’s alive. He’s well. Nothing bad ever happened… yet? _

“General Ironwood, sir, yes sir,” the Ace Op drones urgently, when Qrow can only glare at the way his sculptural arm moves gracefully to pick up the call, at the way his teal eyes glimmer softly, carefully, drinking in these simple sights he thought he’d lost forever. 

“Clover, this is Oscar,” a panicked voice yells down the General’s Scroll. “You have to report to Atlas immediately. Forget the wanted list. I’ve seen the future and talked to the General, he’s fighting to protect the Relic right now. Our top priority is securing the...”

Only a flash of stark white light warns them before the line is cut short. Then thunder echoes, booming through the air as the ship plummets, struck by lightning, all electronics lost. The pilots frantically fidget with the commands, swearing under their breaths, but the crash landing seems unavoidable. And as certain as gravity, as certain as the passage of time, they fall. 

Ultrasounds are clawing at Qrow’s eardrums. He lay on his back, the winds knocked out his lungs, pain ringing all the way down his spine. The ceiling’s grey, metal grey, the floor’s grey, and he’s not sure where’s where, what’s what. The cargo bay is still automatically locked, so even as a bird he couldn’t have escaped the crash. But the windshield is cracked, both pilots ahead motionless, possibly dead. Inhaling sharply, he shape shifts and flies out of the crack. 

The sight that greets him in the frozen tundra isn’t the same as before, but it’s still too familiar for comfort. Part of him wants to fly away as far as possible, but he still needs to make sure Clover and Robyn are safe and Tyrian doesn’t escape. Besides, the kind of problem he faces right now is not the kind he can run away from, but the kind that could literally follow him anywhere. 

“Raven,” he greets coldly, landing before his sister in his human form, hand on the hilt of Harbinger. 

“Where are they, the two relics?” she snaps just as icily, a dark portal vanishing behind her.

“That’s all you have to say? After all this time and all we’ve been through?”

“You don’t know where they are. You’ve lost track of the relics, even though the Lamp was left to your kids and the Staff was kept by Ironwood, who trusts you as his lapdog, his caged bird. You’ve gone weak, just as I imagined.”

“Why don’t you go ask Yang? Didn’t you leave the lamp in her hand last time?”

“I went. She doesn’t have it.”

“Oh, and how is she doing?”

“She… I...” Raven trails off, mask tilted to the floor as she looks down, not daring to meet his glare.

“I know you well enough to tell you’re lying even without seeing your face. You didn’t even want to see your own daughter, because you don’t dare confront her after you left her alone with the Relic of Knowledge in all this mess. You don’t dare face your daughter and bear the consequences of your actions. And you’re insisting I’m the one who’s weak.”

His voice is shaking, digits blanching at his tightening grip on his weapon’s handle. 

“You’re useless,” she spits. “I’ll just finish you off.”

“Be my guest.”


	2. I don't give a damn... good luck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is just some of the things characters say in this chapter (not how I feel about some events in canon) (or is it?)

Qrow draws his sword in one smooth motion as Raven charges at him, blocking and dodging, matching her strike for strike. Fury fuels every one of her moves, each crimson slash rebounding on his larger blade, each kick pushing him backward, boots sliding in the snow. 

“You won’t even fight me like you mean it!” she cries. 

“Because you don’t deserve it,” he growls, converting his sword into its tonfa mode to let Omen slide ineffectively along the curved edge, her momentum sinking her weapon deep into the frosted ground.

She immediately raises her fist for a punch, but he knows her too well, relying on the same tricks himself. His open palm meets her blow, blocking it a hair’s breadth from his abdomen. With one hand, he switches Harbinger into a scythe, the blade extending behind her to cut her down at the spine. Scowling, she shapeshifts and flies over his weapon, landing on the flat of the blade to execute a backflip and regain her own sword before her feet touch the ground. 

“Is that so? And  _ who  _ deserves it?” she calls, holding her weapon in a defiant high guard. “Those weak kids who follow you around, those pathetic, spoiled -”

“I don’t think we’re pathetic, or kids,” echoes a feminine tone behind the Huntsman, as a volley of arrows flies toward the Huntsman’s sister. 

“Robyn, stand back!” Qrow warns as his sister’s sword dances to swipe at each projectile, “This is... personal.”

“At this point, what concerns you concerns me too. We’ve crash landed in the middle of nowhere, with no hopes of coming back under martial law,” she speaks, looking shaken but unharmed, while trying to hail her team for help with her Scroll, catching little signal amidst the barren tundra. ” We’re all in this together.”

Qrow sighs, cut short by another voice before he can explain. 

“What she said,” Clover claims loudly, throwing the hook of his weapon forward to wrap his fishing line around Omen, disarming Raven with a flick of his wrist. 

As she already draws an emerald-shaded blade, Qrow catches the flying red sword in mid-air at the end of Clover’s rope, raising both his weapon and his sister’s overhead to block her downward strike. Dust sparks fly where the three blades touch, her masked face dangerously close to the point of contact.

“You really think your  _ friends  _ will save you?”

The masked woman kicks her brother in the stomach, sending him sliding backward. Half-sheathing Omen, she holds out her large sheath for protection as Robyn runs beside her, peppering her with Dust-loaded darts that exploded in different bright colours. On the Tribeswoman’s other side, the Ace Op springs forward, his hook locking onto her sword and forcing her to unsheathe to fight him. Kingfisher and Omen clash loudly, in quick succession, each of her powerful, sweeping strikes met by the short and precise blocks of his weapon in its spear form. As Clover bends over to dodge, Qrow finds an opening in his sister’s unsteady pose and attacks, his scythe tracing a fatal, flowing flourish too fast for the eye to follow. In one smooth arc, he deflects her sword and spins forward to attack.

“Predictable,” she snorts, evading the large blade that ploughs through the snow.

This is the moment Robyn waited for to lunge forward, propping herself into the air by swinging off the hilt of Harbinger and sending both her feet flying into Raven’s face, shattering her mask. The female shapeshifter tumbles backwards, sliding a few feet away from her opponents. Her red eyes glow with unbridled fury, standing out amidst her wary, pallid face. Qrow draws his gun to shoot at her, but to his surprise he finds Kingfisher’s rope wrapping tightly around him, immobilising him.

“This catch is  _ mine _ ,” the Ace Op tells the Tribe leader, a hint of possessiveness in his tone. “The General wants him alive.”

“Oscar told us to forget the wanted list,” the Mantle politician intervenes tentatively. 

“The kid isn’t the General, we don’t take orders from him. I haven’t heard James say anything.”

“Your friends don’t even want to save you, dear brother,” the crimson-eyed woman taunts, “they’re too busy figuring out whether to obey the tin soldier or a puny little -”

“Clover, listen,” her twin interjects. “I’ve seen the future. I’ve seen that if we don’t team up, you die. Stabbed by Tyrian with Harbinger. I know this sounds crazy and you can’t believe me and you don’t trust me, and after everything that happened, I can understand that. But please, listen to me. Do the right thing.”

The Ace Op’s shoulders visibly drop at these words, trying to take in their meaning, shuddering over their full weight. He blinks rapidly, attempting to process the condensed amount of news.

“I want to trust you...” he stammers, dumbfounded.

Déjà-vu churning in his gut, Qrow’s hands tremble violently, dropping Harbinger at his feet. 

“Enough!” Raven croaked, tackling the distracted Atlesian captain onto the ground before pressing her blade to his neck.

Without losing a second, Robyn loads an arrow at random into her crossbow and fires to deflect Omen from Clover’s throat. To her surprise, Qrow’s sibling raises her hand to catch - and the dart detonates in her fist. When the explosion subsides, both Clover and Raven’s Auras are flickering away from their collapsed forms. 

“I’m sorry,” Robyn whispered, gloved hand flying to her lips as lilac eyes seek to meet Qrow’s visibly shaken gaze. 

“Well,  _ I’m _ not sorry,” a certain Scorpion Faunus’s voice cackles just behind the former Tribesman, mocking a bow while his eyes turn purple, stinger raised over his leaning silhouette. 

From the corner of his eye, Qrow sees Raven reach out her hand, light glimmering from her palm… before lightning hits the rising metal point of Tyrian’s tail, knocking him unconscious. The same lightning that brought down their ship. 

Robyn shoots Clover a glare, the Operative shaking his head to signify his Semblance has nothing to do with lightning striking twice. As the soldier staggers to his feet, Qrow dashes past him, grabbing the bolas from his belt to bind Tyrian’s hands again. The Ace Op can only stare curiously at his partner’s deft fingers tying the Faunus up, hand pressing at his own hipbone where Qrow’s fingers just grazed him. 

The politician is already charging at Qrow’s twin, metal bird wings slashing violently as her opponent blocks, pressing her palm against the flat of Omen’s blade to withstand the Huntress’s strength. Raven hears her brother and Clover’s footsteps at her back - and knows she’s outmatched against three seasoned fighters. Sighing deeply, she swivels around, redirecting Robyn’s blow and sending her off balance, before a blast of sapphire light prances off Raven’s hand. Qrow’s jaw drops as the blonde freezes in her tracks, encased in solid ice. Clover recovers first, wrapping his fishing line around his enemy’s extended arm still gleaming blue. She reaches her palm again, blowing a gust of wind that sends him flying backwards. The breeze quickly grows into a small tornado as she levitates, eyes ablaze with blue flames, until the Ace Op topples over, Kingfisher falling out of his grasp.

“You’re the Spring Maiden...” Qrow realises. “You’ve always wanted control, I never knew you would go to such lengths. By claiming the Maiden powers, you’ve gotten not only Salem and her followers after you and the Tribe, but also Ozpin’s. I hope you’re happy with yourself.”

“You’ve never worried much about the wellbeing of the Tribe,” she shouts back in mid-air. “If you did, you’d never have betrayed us and left.”

“We’ve talked about it. I left a ragtag group of people who’d gladly stab me in the back and who blamed me for all their misfortunes. You left your family and your child. You only wanted power. And now you want even more, now you even want the relics.”

“The Staff of Creation is an infinite source of energy. Imagine what the Tribe could do with an artifact like that. No more raiding villages for Dust, no more hiding like rats in the forest, no more freezing to death during winter nights. Much less misfortune to blame anyone for. Isn’t that what we should have had as kids? What should have been done in the first place with the Staff, instead of uselessly floating a city for privileged people in the sky like your friend Jimmy’s doing?”

“If you take out the staff, Atlas will fall over Mantle, and most of the population of Sanitas will be wiped out. I’ve seen it, like you’ve seen the previous timeline. The magic Ozpin gave us came from the relics, and as such we’re the only ones who’ve seen what happened before the lamp and the staff were used to reset time. Do you want to condemn one of the four Kingdoms of Remnant for your little selfish goal?”

“If they’ve used the staff, it means the Winter Maiden has opened the Vault in the previous timeline. She must be on her way now, this is my chance. Someone was going to take the Atlas relic out of its Vault anyway, so I may as well use it to a good purpose.”

“The timeline has changed, Raven, we both know it. The Staff hasn’t been stolen yet, the Vault may not even have been opened. What happened in the previous timeline won’t necessarily happen again, even with all the misfortune in the world. The future’s uncertain, out of your control. And we’ll make sure what occured before won’t happen again, that the Atlas Relic never leaves the Vault again. We can’t be certain, but we’ll grab out second chance, try our luck, even if we have to die for it.”

“I’d planned to kill you and go find the Relics, but now they’ve all seen I’m the Maiden I’ll just have to kill all your fake friends before your eyes too. Then I’m heading for the Vault, and you guys won’t stop me. _ You’re too weak for that _ .”

“I may be weak, but you’ll still fail. Just like you failed in Haven. History is doomed to repeat itself until we learn from our mistakes, an old friend said. And you haven’t learned. You’re still afraid. You’re afraid to lose me, I saw the way you reacted when Tyrian almost killed me. You’re afraid to lose your daughter, and you’ll still run away rather than confront her. Because deep down you know that if I die, and if Yang dies, there’ll be no one left out there for you to use, no one waiting on the other side of your portal, and you’ll be alone.”

Supporting her fiery glare in defiance, her brother aims his gun at her, forcing her to blast a powerful beam of sizzling blue energy at him. Rapidly switching Harbinger to sword form, he blocks with the flat of the blade, feet sliding slowly but surely against the icy ground. The sun is rising again, and now he realises how beautiful it is, how he may never have the chance to see it again. He doesn’t notice the single tear dripping down on her hollowed cheek, glistening blue amongst the flames surrounding her eyes, gently catching the sunlight.

The siblings circle each other, like the sun and the moon in their orbits. She floats before the dawn, revolving slowly, blue flames radiating from her eyes and hands. He treads in the cold snow, crimson cape in the wind, parrying constantly, fast footsteps relentless. She bends the winds to the will of her palms, trying to control the rising storm. He’s a wary bird caught in the tempest, too weak to fight the winds, let alone control them, too weak to overcome his misfortune. Her powers are ancestral, her strength millenary, passed down from so many Maidens who’d already lost their lives. His strength is waning, weakening at each scar, at each feather shed, adding to the never-ending trauma pursuing him like his shadow; but he must stand strong, for those he hasn’t lost yet, for those he can’t lose ever again, not in this timeline. 

An airship drifts past the sunrise, diving toward them, likely at Clover or Robyn’s beckon. A rictus contorts the Maiden’s mouth as she shifts her hands away from her sibling to blast the ship with another bolt of lightning. Qrow tosses Harbinger spinning through the air, the metal attracting the electrical energy and deflecting it from the plane. The Operative nods at him before swinging his weapon, lassoing Raven’s waist. The hook sails down toward her twin’s hands, who catches it and drags her down. Both men race forward to uppercut her as she fell, sending her tumbling like a ragdoll through the snow. 

“It goes much better when we team up,” Qrow remarks dryly, earning a warm smile from the rather confused Atlesian soldier. 

“I’ve always said so. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re nothing like your sister. You’d never tackle me and try to kill me like that, at least I trust you for that.”

“You’ve got no idea,” the male shapeshifter grumbles. 

“Qrow would totally backstab you,” the all-too familiar voice of a certain scorpion Faunus concurs. 

The Huntsman blinks, and he relives the scene like a shadow puppet show, imprinted against the darkness of his eyelids. Tyrian running up to Clover behind his back, Qrow’s broadsword in his hands, ready to… 

The shapeshifter can’t breathe, he can’t think, he’s a blur of adrenaline, flowing like wind. Gray and red against the desaturated tundra and the bleeding sunrise. The next thing he knows, he’s pushing Clover away from the line of Tyrian thrusting Harbinger. The serial killer’s hands glow magenta, the broadsword tearing through Qrow’s Aura like paper. 

The pain is too sharp, too fast, he’s not even sure it happened, or if it’s the goddamn déjà-vu again. He must be in shock and losing blood, because too many thoughts cross his mind at once as he falls to his knees, as if a flock of Nevermores were flying through his head. How did Tyrian get his hands in front even though he’d tied them behind his back? He must have dislocated his shoulders and put them back together, the bastard would totally have done that. Heck, he’d totally have  _ enjoyed  _ that. He should’ve tied the feet of that filthy criminal together too… And he shouldn’t have thrown his sword to attract the lightning, he was such an idiot, even messing up on his second chance. At least this time Clover...

The Ace Op is a tempest of strikes and slashes, the rope of his weapon dancing around him to protect him from attacks as the pole thrusts forward, sending the assassin flying through the air. The Queen’s Servants spit a series of bullets, but Robyn breaks free of the ice and dashes forward with her weapon to block, shielding both Clover and Qrow with her twirling metal avian. A bullet rebounds off the steel feathers into Tyrian’s cheek, only eliciting a crazed giggle from the Faunus. As he lands, he bends backward acrobatically while rotating Harbinger between his bound hands, severing his restraints and widening his smirk further. 

“Qrow!” Clover yells, rushing to the wounded Huntsman’s side. 

“It’s just a scratch,” the latter slurred, clasping his bleeding abdomen with his palm. 

“That’s not a scratch.” he raised one hand to his earpiece, hailing the landing ship through comms. “This is Clover, we need immediate medical support, one Huntsman injured.”

“It’s nothing compared to what he’d done to you. It’s a good thing you and Robyn were near enough to intervene before he stabbed my whole sword through me.”

“Luck you, huh?”

“You’ll never stop with the luck jokes, will you?”

“And you’ll never stop complaining, even to save your breath,” the Operative teases softly.

“Touché.”

“What an  _ unfortunate  _ choice of words,” a female voice remarks contemptuously, as a crimson blade slices through the air toward them. 

Clover and Qrow both raise their hands to catch. Their fingers brush against the slim hilt of Raven’s sword, the sudden warmth making both of them flinch, albeit not unpleasantly. They can’t help but smile slightly, oblivious to the crackling storm of ice shards hurled straight toward them. 

Everything turns white. Sparks of blue dance before Qrow’s eyes, everything prickles, every inch of his skin stings like a thousand icicles. Everything is too loud, and everything is silent. His eyes are hurting too much, he can’t pry his eyelids open. Where’s Clover? Clover can’t be… no… Qrow couldn’t have messed up again, not the second time around… Damn you Raven…

There is a faint whistle through the air, followed by an impact onto the snowy ground. Where Robyn’s dart hits the floor, a wall of rocks sprouts. The Earth Dust construction is fragile, but firm enough to delay the Maiden’s attack. Qrow sees Clover using his grappling hook to swing himself over the wall and tackle his partner’s sister, while the politician is already parrying Tyrian’s deadly curved blades. This is bad, really bad… He’s seen Clover fight and contend against himself and the scorpion Faunus, he knows how strong the Ace Op is, but how foolish could he be to face down a Maiden on his own? And while the blonde Huntress could more than fend for herself, Qrow could barely contain violent flashbacks of that stinger barely grazing him and that damage it had done… Qrow closes his eyes, wanting to sink into the snow, to contain his Semblance like one folds a blanket so that it doesn’t spread around him, onto Robyn, onto Clover... 

From the ground, he sees the politician’s footsteps, backing ineluctably toward the wall as she fires shot after shot at Tyrian. The assassin dances like a madman, spinning around to deflect in turn with his wrist blades, with his stinger, with Harbinger. Supporting himself with his prehensile tail, he crosses his arms cockily, ineffective projectiles rebounding against his weapons. Next he saunters into a playful handstand, blocking a dart between his heels before tossing it into the air and swinging at it with Qrow’s sword to send it flying back toward Robyn. 

Painstakingly sitting up, the former Tribesman shapeshifts and dives toward her shoulder, dragging her away from the arrow’s path with his talons. The explosive hits the stone wall instead, the rubble tumbling onto an unlucky scorpion Faunus while Robyn bounces out of the way and wrenches Harbinger from his grasp with the crook of her crossbow. Raising both her weapon and Qrow’s, she protects herself and her bird teammate from falling rocks. Before the scorpion Faunus can extract himself from the debris, she shoots an Ice Dust round, freezing the rocks in place to trap Tyrian underneath.

Clover seizes his luck and catches a falling piece of shattering wall with his fishing line to toss it onto his airborne opponent, eyes surrounded with cobalt flames. He stands with difficulty, the hilt of Kingfisher firmly impaled into the ground to anchor him against the winds from the Maiden’s hands. Ice shards and scorch marks litter his uniform and the ground around him, testimony to the attacks he barely dodged or blocked. Raven smirks at the boulder flying toward her head, materialising a gigantic ice sword in her hand to cleave it cleanly in two. 

“My brother is so stupid for falling for  _ you _ ,” she snaps. “He must be even weaker than I thought to rely on others so heavily, to have to trust and depend on you the way he does. I’d make him a favour by destroying you.”

The soldier swings his hook again, which simply slides off her icy broadsword wielded in one hand while her other arm twirls a yellow blade, cutting through Robyn’s arrows in a flurry of slashes. 

“Spoiled, pathetic kid,” she repeats. “I wonder what he sees in you.”

“I don’t know,” Clover replies, “but I know he deserves happiness, and I would give my life to ensure he gets what he deserves. And unlike you, I’ll do it no matter what, no matter what he can do for me in return, no matter what he sees in me, because I have no idea and right now  _ I don’t give a damn _ .”

Robyn stares wide-eyed at the unusual profanity spilling out of the model soldier’s lips. That’s what love is, she realises, her expression betraying her emotions. 

“Everything,” Qrow exhales, shifting back into his human form next to his allies, a bloodied hand clutching his injury, as his twin’s brow furrows in confusion. 

“This is what I see in him, everything,” he clarifies, leaning onto Harbinger like an old man onto a cane, red blood splattering onto white snow. 

Painfully propping himself up, he extends his weapon onto its full war scythe mode and raises it overhead, far enough to graze at her stomach, forcing her to raise both blades and block with exasperating ease and agility. The clash of Harbinger against her swords is deafening - enough for her not to notice the nearing helices of the airship hooked by Clover’s weapon, dragged to hover right behind her back. With all his remaining strength, Qrow swivels his weapon around, hitting his sibling with the hilt to send her flying into the plane’s windshield, before the vehicle crash-lands into her. 

Clover, Qrow, and Robyn shield their eyes as the airship tumbles roughly before them, projecting snow onto their faces. But the vessel isn’t too badly damaged, and the crew exits safely, saluting formally at the Ace Op captain and the former Council candidate. The wounded Huntsman barely sees a flutter of black wings, bloodied and battered, flying away from the ship before medics rush to his help, throw a blanket on him, tend to his injury. 

Amidst the crash, Tyrian attempts a daring escape again, only for a squadron of soldiers to fire at him from the plane. As he smirks sheepishly, his tail flickers as if of its own volition, deflecting every bullet with deadly precision. The game gets boring though, and his golden eyes seem to contemplate just murdering everyone and leaving, before two recognisable Huntresses from Robyn’s crew - the Faunus and the tall silent one - exit the airship to stop him. 

“Little lamb, didn’t we have some unfinished business?” he calls out to Fiona Thyme, licking his pursed lips meticulously in anticipation of a more entertaining kill. 

“Oh yeah?”

The white-haired Huntress points her polearm weapon toward her teammate, for Joanna to grab it and throw Fiona into the air with a single flex of her muscular shoulder. Fiona lands on the plane’s wing, palm extending downward while nimble feet adjust with the agility of a mountain goat. The serial killer only looks up to see a glimmer of green in her open hand, before a literal handful of multiple-ton heavy Dust-loaded Atlas military grade shipment trucks drops from her hand straight onto his face.

As the explosion of Dust and snow slowly fades, Qrow’s not too sure what happens next - the world is lurching around him and strangely devoid of colour. The next thing he knows, he’s on a stretcher, too many pairs of worried eyes around him. 

“I’ve been through much worse, I’ll be fine,” he scoffs. “I should just get to Jaune, and then I’ll be back in fighting form.”

“Patch him up, then take him to Atlas,” Robyn instructs the airship crew while clapping them in the back to commend their good work. “To Ironwood’s office. Bet he has a secret passageway that leads straight to the vault.”

“He has a personal elevator,” Clover shrugs. “You should be able to hack it with a bit of luck. Or with this.”

Before the shapeshifter registers, the Operative has taken off his namesake pin and pushed it into Qrow’s palm. It feels chill, safe, like a lifeline against his sweaty hand, and he knows nothing bad can happen, ever again.

“It has my security clearance, the automatic doors will let you through,” he explains with a wink. “You should go to your nieces, they must already be defending the relic. And make sure your crazy sister doesn’t attack Yang or do something stupid like that.”

“Stupid runs in the family...”

“Cut the crap, Qrow,” Robyn scolds kindly as she and her Huntresses drag Tyrian onto the airship and safely sedate him, “Clover loves you anyway.”

“I... uh...” Qrow stutters, his head spinning suddenly. 

“It’s okay, I don’t need anything back, not right now,” the Atlesian captain whispers, seizing his partner’s hands to intertwine their fingers together. “General Ironwood, sir?” he replies through comms to a message Qrow can’t hear. 

The Ace Op glances upward, and the shapeshifter follows his gaze to see, streaking the breathtaking lilac sky, a flotilla of airships leaving Atlas and circling the city. 

“They’ve begun evacuation in case Atlas falls,” Robyn deduces. “The Winter Maiden must have already opened the Vault.”

“But this time, we’ll be here to stop them before they take the relic,” Qrow replies, gently tugging Clover’s fingers, so real, so certain, so warm. “These other ships...”

Military planes, connecting the twin cities, drifting downward, outward, slowly but surely. 

“The Huntsmen,” Clover says simply. “They’re responding to Ruby’s call. They’re coming to defend Mantle.”

“And you’re going with them, lucky charm,” Qrow utters, half-realising, half-ordering. “Both of you,” he glances at Robyn. “The Vault isn’t that big, you’ll have to trust me and the kids to defend it alongside your General. Salem’s on her way, not for the Relics, her minions are already there for that, but for the city. Your place is protecting the people, leading the Huntsmen and inspiring them. You need to do the right thing, and it’s not always the easy one.”

“We know and we will,” the blonde Huntress assures, and that was the truth, and that would be enough... had Qrow not seen the outcome of the previous timeline.

“And Clover? Promise me, please,” the shapeshifter whispers. “Promise me you’ll be safe. I don’t want to lose you ever again.”

“It must be all the timey-wimey stuff,” the Ace Op shrugs confusedly, “because I swear you’ve never lost me, and I’ve never lost you, at least in my timeline.”

“Well, lucky you, huh?” Qrow winks heartily, earning a radiant smile from his partner. 

“I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the practical details of having lived through other timelines, but it sounds important to Qrow. Promise him for real?” Robyn suggests, cocking an eyebrow at the Operative as she reaches her hand for him to grasp.

But Clover sidesteps her, instead reaching for a fistful of the shapeshifter’s shirt before planting a soft kiss on his cheek. The slap that follows should have hurt more than it did, in Qrow’s weakened state, but the hard metal rings still leave an embarrassing mark against the Ace Op’s cheekbone. 

“Don’t even try to take advantage of the injured,” the older man grunts, “this better not mean goodbye, and if you wanted to kiss me farewell at least do it like you mean it.”

Running a strong hand through his tousled hair, Clover looks expecting to find the politician mockingly smirking at them. However, he finds the blonde wrapped in a firm hug with Joanna, elated at finding each other safe and sound.

“Qrow, I’m sorry. I promise this isn’t goodbye and I’ll come back for you, no matter what, always.”

“That’s better,” the Huntsman hums in approval to the soldier still massaging the side of his face. 

“Can I...”

Before he may finish his request, Qrow closes the gap and presses his lips to Clover’s. A surprised, endearing gasp escapes the younger man before he kisses back earnestly. Fading in the background, shouting voices announce the airship’s imminent ascent to Atlas, while military trucks courtesy of Fiona round up the Huntsmen departing for Mantle. But none of this matters, because Clover and Qrow stand where they belong, where the forces of destiny in every possible timeline yearn to draw them. Where they belong, where fortune and misfortune balance out and everything is possible, everything feels invincible, if only for a fleeting instant, a melting snowflake in the eye of the storm. Where they belong, right here, right now in each other’s arms. Only when the ship’s engine grumble impatiently, the shapeshifter regretfully pulls away, with two words toward his partner as they part. Two words, one wish, constant through all timelines, all misfortunes and fortunes, unbreakable, indomitable:

“Good luck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: SHEEP. GIRL. IS. BEST. GIRL.   
> No, seriously, she’s so OP. If I had just one more wish for the show, it would be for Fiona to take her revenge against Tyrian by beating the crap out of him [they made everyone else so stupid I’m now rooting for her by default]. I am going to such lengths to try to redeem Robyn, make her less annoying and useless. I had to rearrange my power scaling compared to previous fics, Clover is stronger than I expected, like seriously strong, while Robyn is rather weaker in close quarters, but the power levels stays over all the same (with Clover, Qrow, and Tyrian in the same tier), feel free to argue with me about power scaling in the comments.   
> I am slowly scraping my heartstrings off the floor and planning more light-hearted things to write. Anything about this ship will be AU stuff, most likely. Till then, stay safe and posted xx

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Yah, I retconned everything that happened, because somehow it made me feel better about the penultimate episode’s writing decisions. I made a looong rant to rationalise how I feel about Ep 12, breaking down any issues I have with the events of the episode, in hopes it makes me and others understand and come to terms with any harsh emotions about this episode. If you’re interested (why would you be?) read it [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XejWS-C3LMEHF6_rmk0Vv-_dQQz3CwJ6ND1nJf_qEfs/edit).  
> I’m pathetic like that, don’t mind me, Raven would probably kill me too. While writing this has mostly been mindless and therapeutic, I actually like how this first part came out, at this point I wouldn’t actually mind it if CRWBY went to the extreme where the heroes really lost and died and then pulled a time reset with the Spear of Destiny... I mean, the Staff of Creation (in case you haven't caught on, Legends of Tomorrow is basically my favourite show). We already know the lamp can stop time, and Ironwood and Cinder both go 'the timeline has changed' at some point in the previous chapters, which might be hinting at something like this. But given there is one episode left I don't thik there is time to pull this off, unless the finale is an hour long and actually an Avengers movie. Next chapter is much longer and will have a big fight scene, probably around Friday-ish. Till then, sending big hugs xx


End file.
